


A Thousand Words

by tisfan



Series: Tony Stark Bingo [47]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Photographer, M/M, Photography, Pre-Slash, Shapeshifting, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22738150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Tony knows he’s not supposed to cross the border, but the call of a prize winning photograph is strong. When he finds his subject, things are more than they appear...
Relationships: Tony Stark/T'Challa
Series: Tony Stark Bingo [47]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1030077
Comments: 31
Kudos: 255
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo 2020





	A Thousand Words

**Author's Note:**

> Card 3023, Square S5 - Tony Stark/T'challa

“And how am I supposed to know where the Wakanda border is,” Tony Stark, award winning photographer, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, and self-proclaimed major annoyance, demanded. 

The guide only gave him one of those insufferable looks. “You will know,” he said. “And you must not venture over the border. Those who go to Wakanda often get sick. The disease will take its toll on your mind and body. If you even come back at all.”

Tony had used his considerable money and influence getting this far. One of his colleagues -- and his most loathed rival, if you wanted to pick nits -- had spotted a rare black panther. Keeping in mind that panthers were not, in fact, a real species at all, and Justin Hammer had all the keen insights of a brick, Tony was doubtful.

But the pictures of the great cat fleeing into the jungle had garnered national attention.

And Tony could take better pictures than ones of a blurry black cat. It might not even have been black, just bad lighting.

 _Whatever_.

The point was, a melanistic tiger was a worthy photo subject, especially given how endangered tigers were, and that Tony could shine a spotlight -- metaphorically speaking -- on the species through some really good photos.

The problem was the creature seemed to live around the northern end of Lake Turkana. Which bordered on Wakanda. And Wakandans were very unwelcoming to visitors. Given that most of the rest of the continent had been invaded by northern Europeans and stripped of their rights and resources, and Wakanda had been spared that fate, Tony didn’t really blame them.

But that did mean that they wouldn’t give him permission to enter their country on a wild cougar chase.

He didn’t even get a meeting with the Wakandan ambassador himself; his message went through intermediaries, and all he got back was a no. No explanation or apologies. Just. no. 

Tony didn’t take no for an answer; he never had. It was both his best quality and his most annoying one.

He was going to get those pictures, with or without the Wakandans’ permission.

Of course, it would be easier if he could find the panther on the southern side of its territory. The Kenyan government had been all but falling over itself to accommodate him. Well, he’d have to hope.

Or sneak across.

“Why isn’t there any coffee from Wakanda,” Tony wondered, changing the subject. The guide wasn’t going to be going with him. Wildlife photo shoots were almost as dangerous as wartime shoots, and no one who could avoid it wanted to be that close to animals that might look at you like you were a snack. (Wartime photography was more dangerous, Tony knew for a fact, after spending three months as a prisoner of Ten Rings. If nothing else, a large cat wasn’t cruel. Just hungry. It wasn’t worth the cat’s time to keep Tony alive. If he was going to be kitty kibble, it would be over quickly, and he wouldn’t wake up from nightmares for more than four years now.) Tony’s mouth kept going without conscious input from his brain, because that’s what it did. “Kenya AA is some of the best coffee in the world. Burundi is an excellent bean. Why-- is there single source Wakanda bean?”

The guide gave Tony a condescending look. “The Wakandans do not grow coffee,” he said.

“Waste,” Tony muttered. “Well, I’ll stay out of their territory. No coffee, now _that’s_ a hardship.” He would know Wakanda borders by all the sleeping guards. Got it.

***

He recalled the conversation, looking down at the grass. He didn’t know much about grass, really, except that it was green (usually) and growing on the ground (primarily) and that sometimes people made a fuss about how long it was in the yard.

_You will know the Wakanda border when you see it._

Yeah, okay, so why didn’t anyone bother to mention the grass was fucking purple? You’d think that would be a relatively easy thing to say. Purple grass means do not trespass here. 

And it wasn’t just purple, Tony noted, kneeling. It was glowing. Very faintly, in the growing darkness, but it did make the small area very, very noticable.

Probably more so at night than during the day. Purple grass, it could be a thing, right?

Unfortunately for the purple grass, the damn panther had been seen-- well, just on the other side of that hill. Tony’d spotted it out in the plains, running along after some long-legged deer. Antelopes. Whatever. Probably not a gnu, except that Tony wouldn’t know what a gnu looked like if it bit him. 

He’d gotten a few action shots, but even with the telephoto lense, he really hadn’t gotten any good, _personal_ shots.

He was just going to have to ignore the guide and cross over the border. Right? Wouldn’t hurt anything. In, take some pictures, out. No one had to know.

Stepping into Wakanda territory shouldn’t have felt like taking a step on the moon, but somehow, it sort of did.

Everything seemed softer, more natural, better. Fresher. Tony was obviously being influenced by the mythos and mystery that surrounded the place. Stupid, primitive monkey brain. He ignored the sense of awe and foreboding and crept toward the jungle.

He’d seen the great cat enter the trees, dragging its kill-- surely it would be too occupied with its meal to notice him. Animals didn’t hunt for sport, and eating an already killed and tasty gazelle was a better use of calories than catching one scrawny human photographer whose muscle tissue was flavored by cheeseburgers and kale smoothies.

He tugged on the night vision goggles, which brightened the landscape up considerably, and it wasn’t long before he saw the cat, laying on the branch of a tree, overseeing a small clearing. Tony was just to the edge of the woods and found himself a blind spot to sit, upwind of the great cat, before he noticed--

There were already people in that clearing, sitting outside of a low tent. One was kneeling near the gazelle, the other was poking at a small box that looked very much like a microwave, but couldn’t be, because no one dragged a microwave out into the jungle, did they?

Tony turned his camera carefully; with people nearby he had to be even more careful about making noise. A cat might be evaded. People were predation hunters. If they thought he’d desecrated their country or something, they would track him down.

One woman, one girl. The cat was watching them, and they obviously knew it was there. They were speaking a language that Tony didn’t know, and had never heard. But they were addressing some of their remarks to the cat.

Maybe that was it, Tony decided. Some cultures raised hunting dogs, or falcons, and those animals, over time, had grown into different colors and sizes that arose in nature. Look at the black lab, to the pekinese, to the dachshund. No one would think they all originally came from wolves. The black panther could be nothing more than a specially trained domesticated cat.

Which would be fascinating, but he’d have to consider very, very carefully if he wanted to publish those pictures, since it would be immediately obvious that he’d trespassed to get them. Didn’t matter. He’d decide later. Pictures now. He would be no sort of photographer at all if he let the opportunity pass him by. 

Tony took dozens of pictures; of the two women, one with black hair, the other with white, but both beautiful. Of the cat, lounging in the tree. Of the dead gazelle, neck neatly snapped but unmarred by the cat’s teeth otherwise.

Finally, whatever meal the one woman was cooking was done, and she said something to the other -- the smells were amazing. Tony’s stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in a while, but he didn’t dare even try to get one of his granola bars out.

He focused on the meal. One, two… three. Three plates. The woman hesitated, sighed, and then made a fourth plate.

Tony blinked, then realized to his horror, that the cat was-- 

Coming right at him.

Tony took several pictures by reflex alone, which is the only reason why, later, he could convince himself that he hadn’t gone insane.

“You may as well come to dinner,” the cat-- the CAT? Said, walking toward him, body moving, and then shifting up onto two legs, and finally, a man stood there in front of him, noble and strong and pure and-- smiling?

“Tony Stark. I should have known you would not be so easily disuaded.”

Tony blinked and looked up at the man. There was something cat-like about him in his grace and figure. Very long, dexterous fingers reached down. “Come on up out of there. We’ve known you were there, the whole time. Do not think you can sneak up on the tribe of the Panther God. One of these days, it will get you into trouble.”

Tony reached for the man’s hand, not entirely sure if he was dreaming, or hallucinating in the last moments of his life. 

“You know me?”

“I am T’challa,” the man said. “You requested an audience with me, to plead your case. Of course I know who petitions me.”

“Your majesty,” Tony said. And then, because his brain was still running full cycle, he blurted out-- “You’re like, a werecat?”

T’challa scoffed, and the girl behind him made an even ruder noise. “No. We are not cursed monsters, like in your horror movies,” T’challa said. “It is a gift from the gods.”

“I don’t believe in God,” Tony said automatically.

“That’s all right, Mr. Stark,” the girl said, bringing a mug of something fragrant to drink. “God doesn’t believe in you either.”

“What happens now?”

“Now? Now you drink, and you have dinner, and after dinner, we will return you across the border,” T’challa said. He pressed the cup into Tony’s hand, and there was something in his eyes that didn’t allow for refusal. “You will, unfortunately, contract one of the jungle fevers. You will wake up in a few days, and you will have forgotten all about this night. You have seen nothing. You will remember nothing.”

“What--”

“It’s that, or we could kill you,” the girl said.

“Shuri--”

“I’m just saying, there are _options_.”

“But I--” Tony protested. 

“We are not stealing your memories,” T’challa said, and led him over to the fire. “We are only taking back that which you first stole from us. It is fair, and right, and you will never miss it.”

It was fair.

But-- the things he’d seen, that he’d _photographed_. They couldn’t be lost. And maybe they wouldn’t be. His camera uploaded automatically every ninety minutes. If he could just delay, the pictures would be on a Stark satellite and then downloaded to his home network. 

“All right,” he said. “Dinner, and you can tell me about your gods.”

When Shuri rolled her eyes, Tony added, “Does it matter? I won’t remember it anyway. What possible harm can it do for me to know, just for tonight?”

T’challa laughed, warm and rich and appealing. “You are a stubborn man,” he said. “I like that. Sit, share a meal, and listen to our tales.”

Ninety minutes…

Surely, the stories would take ninety minutes.


End file.
